George Calombaris’s MAdE Establishment Group found payroll ‘discrepancies’ for 162 staff.
Photograph: Melinda Durston

More than 160 people employed by the restaurant empire controlled by the celebrity chef George Calombaris have received $2.6m after it was revealed they had been underpaid overtime for up to six years.

Calombaris’s MAdE Establishment Group found payroll “discrepancies” in overtime calculations for 162 workers stretching back to 2011.

“I am so sorry we have messed up and let you down on a fundamental issue, which is to ensure our people are paid their full entitlements,” the MasterChef host said.

“I am devastated by what has happened and we have been working extremely hard to fix this,” he said.

Back payments owed to each staff member averaged just over $16,000, said the MAdE chief executive, Troy McDonagh.

MAdE, which has 430 employees, also revealed that almost half of the staff were overpaid their base salary owing to “poor processes in classifying employees”. Those who had been overpaid would not be required to repay any money.

It said it had now correctly classified “all team members who were affected, and all entitlements owed to the 162 current and past employees have been calculated and were paid today”.

In 2012 Calombaris made headlines when he blamed weekend penalty rates for making the restaurant business uneconomical. He said then he would have to pay staff up to $40 an hour on Sundays.